Adrianna Rochester – Special to the Southern News
Southern’s student marketing club (SUMA Marketing) connects students to the resources needed to develop professional skills and marketing experience, through their many fundraisers, workshops, competitions and more, said Randye Spina, advisor to SUMA Marketing.
“Since the fall we’ve doubled our membership and creating a membership benefits package,” Spina said. “Our greatest accomplishment, however, was making it to the semi-finals in the American Marketing Association’s International Collegiate Case Study Competition.”
For this particular competition, SUMA created a 40-page marketing plan designed to increase Ebay’s participation of their online trading market for Millennial non-users. According to Forbes, as of 2016 Ebay’s estimated net worth was 27.9 billion dollars with online sales of about 13.14 billion dollars.
“We competed with other chapters from across the globe and now we get to finalize funding for our trip to New Orleans to attend the AMA Collegiate Conference,” she said.
“This will be the first time SUMA will go to a conference,” said Julia Rotella, president of SUMA. “It will be good to connect with other chapters, go to the professional development sessions, and hear all the speakers.”
Other than taking part in international competitions, SUMA spends a significant amount of time hosting on-campus events. For example, Rotella said the organization’s most recent event was a Valentine’s Day fundraiser where they sold mason jars filled with Valentine’s Day candy.
“All the products that we sell during our fundraisers are created by members of the organization,” Rotella said.
By creating their own products, Rotella said it gets members out of their comfort zone and gets them use to producing and marketing products to potential consumers.
“We bought a total of 200 hundred mason jars and 200 of each item to either go inside the jars or to decorate them,” Rotella said.
Other than the Valentine’s Day fundraiser, SUMA is planning a March Madness basketball fundraiser as well as their second annual Mission Market Yourself Event, which is designed to help students learn how to professionally market themselves to future employers, help students to develop leadership opportunities and connect students to resources necessary to advance their careers.
The workshop series for the Mission Market Yourself Event in past years consisted of a guest speaker who gave tips on how to deal with stress management, resume building and more. Even though the details of this year’s event are still in the works, Rotella said some of the same elements from the past event, hopefully will return in their upcoming one.
Photo Courtesy: SUMA